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Why
The Natural Calendar? What's so different about it? Why doesn't it
look right?
This is a thirteen month calendar that depicts each
year as running from Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice. This depiction is
based on the International Fixed Calendar as described by Web Exhibits in
this link:
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-future.html
I call it the "Natural Calendar" to differentiate it
from all others, and for the fact that it most closely divides the year
into months of equal lengths (with a 1¼ day remainder this calendar offers
as a celebration on its own, named Nonday). Atheists, it would seem, as
would other secular folks and people of religions not Xian, need a
calendar that does not cater to holidays related to one distinct cult.
Certain times of the year, often tied to agrarian interests, were
celebrated or honored long before Xianity rose up to dominate the west. In
modern times, events and discoveries related to science deserve
celebration. We ought to keep
track of them, to keep ourselves reminded that
the world is not all about the doom and gloom inherent to religion.
I would suggest Thanksgiving be devoted to a feast and a toast to the
scientists and others, past and present, who have devoted their lives to
the actual betterment of humankind, without whom so many of us would not
now be alive, nor so comfortable in our living as we now enjoy. With that,
we could turn our attentions to the challenges that still await solutions,
such as global warming, overpopulation, and starvation induced by religion
and other forms of ignorance and superstition.
The idea for this calendar came to me while I wrote
the first two books of my
THIS
WORLD series. It has distinct advantages over
the Gregorian Calendar in current use, being easier to calculate time from
now until then, to keep track of payments and interest, and also (for some
women) the monthly menstrual cycle. You can be late for more than just
your bank loan, you know?
Click here:
View other months to see how Nonday and
Double Nonday fit between 2004 and 2005.The link to a girlie version is
above (right now outdated), for you fellows with shop lockers. The
Solstice and the period during which the day stays at its shortest length
constitutes the 12 days of Luminas, during which the wealth gained from
the past seasons gets celebrated, and then human beings start looking
forward to the impending arrival of spring's warmth. Nature-oriented
people have celebrated during this period for thousands of years until
those who refused to adopt the new religion were tortured and murdered for
their beliefs. A secular group,
Universists (the national group has fallen, but
local groups may still persist), celebrate Dec. 21 - 27 as Luminas.
Xian Xmas falls right in the middle of that.
Last year's Nonday fell the eve of the
Gregorian Winter Solstice due to what is called "the ha'penny effect",
wherein the quarter days left over at the end of each year get "rounded
up" to the next whole day. It's just another one of the complications that
have been added to the Gregorian calendar. In This World, the quarter days
build up to Double Nonday, which occurs in those years we now designate as
Leap Years—years which, in the case of This World, have two Nondays
between them (except for century years divisible by four) after which
things are back in sync for another cycle. Nonday of 'leap' years is
expressed as in "Nonday 2008/9". That Nonday season is one of those, in a
Double Nonday Year. 8^)
ISBN 0-595-22385-0.
Xmas got inherited from ancient traditions that
celebrated the anticipated return of Spring, during a bunch of days that
are the shortest of the year, right after the solstice, and just before
days start getting longer again, a very welcome sign. X (Cristos, Christ),
the Sun God in ancient times, became the Son of God in Xianity. Ain't life
grand?
The calendar shows the Gregorian dates and names of
days in finer print. Nonday for the current year, had This World already
existed, falls on Gregorian December 21 of the previous year (which we
Gregorianly habituated still see as "this year" until Natural January is
half over). Double Nonday occurs on the Solstice to catch things up again
before January got started. The inhabitants of
This
World, of course, will never know that.
An actual similar calendar proposed for Planet Earth before The Great
Catastrophe, named the International Calendar, never became adopted due to
the wide discrepancy between the weekdays, and because of many people's
insistence that the year should begin at the autumn equinox at which, in
This World, The Season of Withering begins, as the old year is seen to
still be in its final stage of life. The Death of the Year is celebrated
Nonday Eve, The Conception of the New Year is celebrated January Eve, and
signifies the growing acceptance in This World of January 1 as the
Birthday of the New Year (Jan 1, though, being the equivalent of the
Gregorian Dec. 21 in some years, 22 in others).
I'll have to admit that, when I wrote the This World
stories, I didn't give any more thought to the subject of calendars or
clocks than I did to the gravity anomaly (a condition of life on a
cubical world) (Have you ever wondered why planets are always round?).
I'll also admit I knew very little about This World's calendar, except
(with its 13 months plus Nonday) it didn't seem all that much like our
own. After noticing how some people seemed unexpectedly interested, I
called a gathering of my characters to discuss this matter with them.
I sent a message to the Rock 1Wytch
and Sand Wytch (ISBN
0-595-22391-5), along with their
respective 2Wizzards, and He the Messenger,
all of whom refused to come because they suspected I had also invited the
Mystic Wytch and they did not wish to become her next meal (A rumor has it
that the last time she took someone to dinner, he became her main course
over the next several days). They required me to go to their places to
meet with them individually, which is why it took me so long to get back
to you folks, and why the calendar has been missing or became outdated so
often.
They assured me right off that, in spite of your
complaints, they refuse to give up any Nondays, the only day of the entire
year important enough, and useful enough, to deserve a name (The calendars
shown on webshots.com use Gregorian names to aid our understanding). They
wanted to know what is our problem with their calendar. I told them about
weekdays changing names at the beginning of most years. I explained how
the name changing seemed to confuse some people. They responded by saying
everything about our calendar confused them! They reminded me that, on
This World, things get named by what they are, so days are only known by
their numbers, and that I had confused the issue by attempting to jibe
their gorgeous, uniform creation with some ugly device generated by an
aged movie star who only wanted a regular income. "Therefore, in This
World," they told me, "days are known as One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six,
and Seven. And, of course, by the important name of Nonday0 or Nonday00."
After I convinced them that Pope Gregory and Gregory
Peck were two different people, they explained the workings of their
calendar. "We'll defend it for its simplicity," they said. "Any person can
carry the full year in his or her head, and can figure out the days by
knowing basic arithmetic."
"That's surely something we can't do now," I mused.
"To start with, we don't have 'weeks' in This
World," they went on to explain. "The month is depicted as divided into
four quarters as a way of getting it onto one sheet of the paper you
brought us. That just happens to make it into four divisions of seven
days, there being a uniform 28 days in each month. We sometimes draw it
four divisions wide and seven divisions down, just for sport. Every day is
a number, unless it has a name, like 'Solstice', or a name of a holiday,
like Nonday and Double-Nonday (which aren't parts of a year—they're OUR
days!), which are still numbered zero and zerozero.
"Now, to figure a day of a month, like the
week-position of the 21st day, you divide by seven, which tells you the
21st day is the seventh day of the third quarter. The twentieth day, by
the same practice, gets you 2 quarters with six remaining, which says
you're at the sixth day of the second quarter for that month (which also
don't have names in This World, they reminded me)."
"So, what does that get that we don't have with our
regular calendar?" I asked.
"For one thing, it works for any month of any year,
like we said. You can carry a picture of it in your head, once you've been
using it a while, and you'll see a great many advantages we wouldn't
mention because they don't occur to us until a need arises. Let's say, for
example, you're at the fifteenth day of the fifth month. You can depend on
the fact that every month looks identical to the rest, and also from one
year to the next—unless you screw things up by trying to give names to
things that haven't yet earned them! So, you want to know what day of the
year it is, so you can figure how many days it is, for example, until the
next Nonday. The month being number five, you simply multiply 28 times
four and add fifteen. Do it a while and you'll know four times 28 by
heart, BUT: four times 25 is a hundred, plus four times the other three is
twelve, plus fifteen into the fifth month is 127 all added together. So,
364 minus 125 is, well, there's some sand and there's a stick. You figure
it out!
"Anyways," they went on, "the only things that
change from one year to another are the moon phases and the number of
Nondays." They made me promise to stop adding names to their calendar,
which I may do beginning next year. You can get the entire 2004CE calendar
and sample months to use as examples (The year number is NOT recognized in
This World, but is OURS) from
http://community.webshots.com/album/36868588VGHMxk
Now, about that gravity anomaly . . .
Get the tasteful
Girlie Calendar
for the current month.
NEXT PAGE
1. WYTCH: a trainee in
the building industry for This World
2. WIZZARD: A journeyman
in the building industry for This World |
